by Rachel George, David Leon Moore, USA TODAY Sports

by Rachel George, David Leon Moore, USA TODAY Sports

She is a beautiful young woman, in her early 20s, fighting leukemia. Unlike Lennay Kekua, she is real.

Jazmine Lutu smiles back from the Facebook page of her uncle, Titus Tuiasosopo. It is her cousin, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who several media reports say orchestrated the hoax that led former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o to believe Kekua had died of the disease when she never even existed.

Tuiasosopo has yet to respond publicly to the reports. In an off-camera interview on Friday night, Te'o told ESPN that he had no involvement in the hoax and that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo confessed to him in a phone call on Wednesday that he was responsible.

While the world created around Kekua was false, some details of it align with the true-life experiences of the Tuiasosopo family. Lutu's struggle with cancer is one of at least three parallels between actual events chronicled on the Facebook page of Titus Tuiasosopo that match fictional details in the Kekua tale. Lennay Kekua was never in a car accident, but Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was in a March wreck. A touching quotation Te'o attributed to Kekua after her reported death was the same one Titus Tuiasosopo previously posted on his Facebook page after a relative died in August.

Reached on Friday, Lutu confirmed to USA TODAY Sports that she continues to battle cancer but declined to comment further about her family.

According to Titus Tuiasosopo's Facebook page, Lutu was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in August. She was set to receive a bone marrow transplant.

The fictional Lennay Kekua died at 22 years old in September after a brief battle with leukemia, a disease supposedly discovered after she'd been in a serious car accident. Brian Te'o, Manti's father, even told The South Bend Tribune in October that Kekua received a bone marrow transplant.

Kekua's accident was reported as happening on April 28.

It was just about a month earlier, on March 23, when Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and at least two male cousins were in a car accident.

Around 5 a.m. on that day, Tuiasosopo was involved in a two-vehicle accident on California State Highway 14 near Avenue I in Lancaster, the California Highway Patrol confirmed on Friday. An officer reached at the Antelope Valley Station could not discuss other details of the crash or any injuries that resulted from it.

On his Facebook page that day, Titus Tuiasosopo, who is the pastor of a church where his son leads the band, wrote, "This morning at the outset of our travels to Reno, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and Team Worship were in an unfortunate car accident."

Over the subsequent days, Titus Tuiasosopo's Facebook page detailed the recovery of two of his nephews who were hospitalized and at least briefly in intensive care as a result of the crash.

The story of the accident is one Ronaiah reportedly told when he auditioned on The Voice, according to US Weekly.

A third parallel comes in a quotation Te'o shared with his teammates before practice on the day he learned that Kekua had died just hours after his grandmother, who did actually pass away that day in September.

According to Sports Illustrated, he told his teammates, "My girlfriend always told me, 'Send roses while they can still smell them, tell people you love them while they can still hear.'"

On Titus Tuiasosospo's Facebook wall, he offered the same message as the family mourned the loss of a relative in August.

"Give roses while you can smell them. Tell them you love them while they can hear you," he wrote.

Titus Tuiasosopo is a teacher at Paraclete High School, a small Catholic school in Lancaster, Calif.

Efforts to contact him at the school â?? in person, and through phone calls and emails â?? were unsuccessful.

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo has not spoken to the media since the Deadspin article suggested he is responsible for the hoax. On Friday, ESPN quoted an unnamed friend of Tuiasosopo's who said he admitted to orchestrating it to fool Te'o.

"I know so much has been splattered all over the media about my son & my family," Titus Tuiasosopo wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday. "I also know that many who were born in a manger in Bethlehem & continue to walk on water will undoubtedly express their opinions. Those of you who know us the best still love us the most."

Lucy Nava, who claimed to be Te'o's aunt, responded, "THANK YOU TITUS FOR THE LOVE N SUPPORT U HAVE FOR MY NEPHEW...N GOD BLESS YOUR SON AND FAMILY AS WE SUPPORT HIM N YOU ALL AS WELL..FA'AFETAI LAVA"

Tuiasosopo lives in a two-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac in a tidy, middle-class neighborhood in Palmdale, 10 miles south of Lancaster and about an hour's drive north from downtown Los Angeles. His street is currently lined with television trucks. A variety of media outlets are holding stakeouts.

Friday afternoon, no one answered a knock on the front door. The porch was littered with notes and business cards of media outlets seeking interviews.